


Tarot

by Eva Thomas (elusivetruth)



Category: Original Work
Genre: Blood and Violence, Female Character of Color, LGBTQ Character, LGBTQ Themes, Mind Rape, Multi, Superpowers, Trans Character
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-31
Updated: 2018-06-15
Packaged: 2019-04-16 08:27:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 21,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14160774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elusivetruth/pseuds/Eva%20Thomas
Summary: Tarot is a serialized story following Jun and Mel, two young adults who discover they have gained superpowers, and when the two of them try to rescue Jun's sister from religious extremists, they discover both of their powers are more powerful and more dangerous than they could have imagined. Now if they want to avoid the government, others like them, and the world at large, they'll have to play the cards they've been dealt.





	1. Dealt In, 01.01—Jun

_Author note: In case you missed it from the 'About' page, then please be aware that Tarot's tone and content vary but can reach very extreme points that may trigger readers. Use your best judgment and be warned._

* * *

“Good morning, Jun," Dr. Miller said as she slipped in. “And might I say that you're looking very well for someone who's dead?"

 _“Then it’s a deal!” the voice crowed with perverse delight. “And so the flesh dies that the essence might live!_ _I do hope you’ll prove entertaining, my dear girl.”_

I dispeled the memory of the strange dream from the other day. _It even happens in my dreams..._ “That’s quite the diagnosis,” I quietly remarked, a smidge of snark slipping into the words.

“Yes, well,” she replied, and I could hear the smile on her voice as she dragged a stool over to the PC running on the counter and set her clipboard aside. “When you won’t take off your jacket to let my tech take your blood pressure and pulse, he’s got nothing else he can put but 0s. Do you want to talk about why you won’t take it off?”

I let the silence speak for me, as I listened to the near silent hum of the running PC, barely noticeable amidst the sound of said tech knocking on the door across the hall before entering a moment later to begin the process of preparing another patient.

A soft sigh escapes her, and the clacking of keys begins. “How are Nathan and Masuyo? I didn’t see either of them in the waiting room.”

“I could have sworn I was the one here for a refill on sleeping pills. Was the appointment scheduled in their names?”

“Jun...”

“He’s the same as always, and Masuyo is doing well at school,” I relented with a scowl. I hadn’t slept a wink the past two days—not that the inability to sleep was totally out of the ordinary for me—so I needed those pills if I was going to get some sleep any time soon. I’d known Dr. Miller literally my entire life, but there was still only so far I could push things before she dug in her heels. Still... “I _am_ 19\. I don’t need an escort for a doctor visit.” ...that didn’t mean I couldn’t be vindictive about the interrogation, well-meaning though I knew it was.

She pounded away at the keys for a moment longer before rolling over to me and starting her physical examination with my eyes—she always started with them. “You’re taking classes at the community college, right? How is that going.”

I opened my mouth to answer and was promptly cut off by the taste of wood on my tongue as she slipped a tongue depressor in, forcing me to utter the typical ‘ah’ sound as she examined whatever the hell it is doctors look for in the back of throats. With a hum, she moved on, turning my head to the side before I heard her snatch up the ear light from its wall holder, a soft click resounding as she snapped on the actual earpiece before it slipped into my ear. “SSCC, yeah. Classes are fine. Did you know they have a counseling department? First three visits are free for all students.

Dr. Miller huffed out a small laugh as she rotated my head the other way and began examining my other ear. “Is that right? I can’t help but notice that you didn’t follow that up with a, ‘Which I’m taking advantage of.’ Give me some credit.”

“That’d be lying,” I bluntly remarked as she rustled through her pockets, presumably searching for her rubber mallet. “My reflexes are fine. I’m just here for a refill.”

“And you’ll get it right after—”

“I have to get to class.” Technically not a lie. I _did_ have class after this, though I carefully omitted the fact I had more than enough time to get to the class hall at SSCC via bus and a short walk. The silence that followed left me with the distinct impression she was not impressed. _Okay, time to bring out the big guns._ “Please?”

She was still for a few moments before she wheeled back over to the computer, the conversation lulling away in favor of the clacking keys once more. I didn’t miss her soft sigh, and I did my best to ignore the small niggling feeling of guilt it elicited in me. She was more than just my primary care doctor, and that was exactly the problem. I knew without needing to ask she wouldn’t blab to dad about anything I said, but I could vividly imagine what she’d say about the scars or their fresh neighbor. I didn’t need a concerned family friend right now—I needed sleeping pills so I’d have the energy to keep up with school, work, and _especially_ Masuyo. ‘A handful’ didn’t even remotely begin to describe my little sister, and she had only gotten worse since her freshman year of high school had started a few months ago.

“I sent the refill to your pharmacy,” Dr. Miller said, drawing me from my musing. “And Jun? It doesn’t matter if it’s me, a counselor at Esscee, your dad, or even Masuyo... Please talk to someone?”

I snatched up my cane and slid off the exam table, the paper laid over it crackling loudly before I landed with a dull thud. “I’ll keep that in mind. Thank you.”

* * *

“This is getting simply ridiculous!” my history professor exclaimed for what felt like the thousandth time as his mic apparently shorted out again. The receiver clattered hollowly as all but threw the device into the small shelf underneath the top of the lectern. “Mr. Kawashi,” he called out, his nasal voice and mispronunciation of my name causing my teeth to grind involuntarily. “Can you hear me well enough for me to stop using this infernal contraption?”

Good lord, could he sound any older? ‘Infernal contraption?’ Might as well have thrown in a, ‘Back in my day!’ while he was at it... “It’s Kawahashi, sir,” I pointlessly corrected. He had literally not pronounced my last name correctly once the whole semester. I had complained about it once to Masuyo, and she had proclaimed it was my just deserts, since I couldn’t be bothered to remember _his_ name either. On an objective level, I could see the logic, but that sort of thing never made sense to me naturally. “And yes, I can hear you just fine.” _I’m not fucking deaf_ , I silently added.

“Good, good,” he responded before he resumed loudly droning on about the Pacific theater of WWII, a topic I had less than zero interest in. Oddly enough, the sound of his voice tapered off a tad bit without any real change in the inflection of his voice. If I hadn’t known better, I’d have thought he was still talking on the microphone as someone slightly lowered the volume on the receiver.

Which only helped to draw my attention back to the quietly occasional whimper of the girl sitting a few rows behind me at the back of the room. She’d been doing it since she stumbled into class late nearly 45 minutes prior, and she hadn’t stayed still for solid second the entire time she’d been there. It was only little things—shuffling papers, tapping the desk rhythmically, and so on—that most people wouldn’t notice, but I was hardly most people. It was obvious she was anxious about something, but _what_ that was I couldn’t fathom.

 _You’d think she’d just skip class_ , I idly thought before a thought struck me and I ran the mental math. Oh. Maybe that was why. I had no idea what the girl’s name was, but I always knew when she was present for the day because up to the start of class and from the moment it ended, she would always be listening to music at a frankly absurd volume with her headphones. If the noise hadn’t had the slightly muffled timbre of being heard from the gap between the skin and the ear cushions, I definitely would have thought she just had the headphones draped around her neck.

Regardless, my point was I could clearly remember three class sessions where her distinctive sound had not been present, and the professor only allowed three absences before he would knock a student’s grade down by two letters. Exams were only a handful of weeks away, and it’d be awfully silly to let your grade take a blow like that when you were almost done if you could avoid it.

She whined, a low barely audible sort of noise that set me on edge. She sounded like a kicked puppy. Doing my best to put her out of my mind, I tried to focus on the professor’s nasal voice as he explained how American cryptographers ultimately turned the tide of that segment of the war.

I frowned. He was quieter again?

Not too long after, the professor announced the end of class not long triggering the loud din of students packing their belongings. As he did his best to shout out an adjustment to the readings for the next class over the cacophony, I heard the telltale sound of the headphones girl’s music coming to life before she all but fled the room, her notes crumpling loudly as she crammed them into her backpack as she passed my row. I waited a moment to let most of the class file out before I grabbed my cane and left at a more sedate pace, deftly dodging the stragglers.

Modern World History was my only class for the day, one of the perks of being a part-time college student, and I had a couple hours before I was due at Ginza for work that evening, so I had time to eat my packed dinner. I began to make my way towards one of the more secluded park tables that were sprinkled throughout the campus, familiarity guiding the way. Santa Sofia Community College was situated at the fringe of the city, hence why a bus ride was all but necessary unless I wanted to go for a serious run. It was inconvenient in some ways—I hated riding the bus, since the discordant noise always set me on edge—but being located outside the city proper meant the campus felt properly spread out.

A few minutes later, I closed in on my destination, a table on the southern side of campus. Isolated without being far from the bus stop on the western side I would ultimately be heading to. I was disappointed to find the table was occupied.

“Give it up, I know you’re carrying.”

I didn’t recognize the gruff voice of the speaker, but I couldn’t possibly miss the sound of headphones girl.

_click_

It was three guys together with headphones girl. Hm... Or maybe the smallest one was just a stocky girl? It could be hard to tell at times. I pegged the voice from a moment ago as belonging to the tallest of the bunch, though they all towered above me, even headphones girl. Being 165cm tall (or 5’4”, if you really wanted to be American about it) meant that essentially 9 out of 10 adult men were taller than me by at least a little bit, and half of adult women were. Still, headphones girl was probably...

_click_

12 to 14 centimeters taller than me, give or take. And the three, presumably, guys who I belated realized were crowding her against the short edge of the table ranged between 9 to 15 centimeters taller than _her_. I was a head shorter than three-quarters of the group.

“Excuse me?” headphones girl replied as the melody from her headphones shifted, the muffled quality disappearing but the volume dropping. Headphones shifted to the neck with volume adjusted down simultaneously, I determined. “What do you want?”

I frowned slightly. If she hadn’t been looking at them, then she wouldn’t have heard them approaching with her music blasting straight into her ears. Given the three others’ positioning, I was left with the distinct impression they’d snuck up on her before cornering her. What caught my attention the most though was the strange lilt headphones girl spoke with. There was a hint of an accent, something vaguely European, but it was somewhat stilted. An accent like that stood out in Santa Sofia on its own, doubly so when the speaker didn’t sound secure in her own voice.

“I said give me whatever it is you’ve got that’s got you tweaking out so much.” The grass around the table rustling as he shifted his foot in closer. “You were fucking obvious in class, so don’t bother trying to hide it. Just give it here.”

Well, curiosity about headphones girl’s accent aside, I wanted nothing to do with this situation. It was obviously going to be troublesome. From their positioning and the slight difference in resonation between headphones girl’s and tall guy’s voices, I could tell she was the only one facing my way, and tall guy was positioned almost perfectly between us. As swiftly but silently as possible, I turned on my heel and began to walk away, already mapping out a path to a different table for me to set up camp at for a late lunch.

“Don’t know what you’re talking about,” she mumbled, and despite her odd timbre, I could hear the fear in her words—the slight warble, her pitch unconsciously rising. She didn’t sound high to me, and I definitely knew the signs to be wary of. Had to be in Santa Sofia. In spite of myself, I began to slow, my curiosity warring with my pragmatism. If she wasn’t using, then why had she acted so oddly in history-guy’s class? My first thought was a headache or migraine, but I quickly wrote that off. It didn’t mesh with her willing subjecting herself to the music that, even now, was quite loud in my opinion. No other explanation immediately came to mind.

The dull thud of a body striking wood reached my ears, followed by a gasp from headphones girl that bled into muffled cries and the voice of tall guy saying, “I tried to... Nevermind. Search her bag, Mitch.”

By this point I was over 20 yards away, so I put some more pep in my step as ‘Mitch’ began to rustle through her bag. A prudent assaulter would be on the lookout for potential witnesses, and the further away I was, the less likely I was to be seen or otherwise deemed as such. The warmth of the sun had vanished during class, and from what I remembered of the day’s forecast, it would ultimately be setting soon. Dusk was covering my retreat, which unfortunately wasn’t as good as darkness.

Still, I thought I was more or less in the clear, which understandably made me freeze in my tracks when I heard the panicked voice of headphones girl from next to my right ear.

“Please!”

The word seemed to echo in my head as I whirled in place, lashing out with my cane on instinct but striking nothing but air.

_click_

20 meters away, all four of them. No question... Then what?

“Help me!”

The voice came from directly behind me this time. I ducked and twisted, cane slashing diagonally up through the empty space behind me viciously enough that a hollow whistle followed in its wake. Preserving the momentum, I spun on my right heel to face towards the four of them once more.

CLICK

“The fuck?” I whispered, the words leaving my lips without a thought when the click rang out much, much more loudly than it should have, drawing the attention of the third assaulter.

“Hey, what’re you looking at?” he yelled in my direction.

 _Nothing,_ I thought with a smirk, saying nothing. In spite of my disappointment at being found, I was satisfied to find I had been right in my first assessment. The trio were all guys.

“Who’s there, Dwayne?” I heard the rustle of fabric as tall guy glanced at me over his shoulder, his hand still covering headphones girl’s mouth. “Isn’t that the blind chick from Zurick’s class?”

I bristled a little at that, even though I was used to people making the mistake. I was short, had long hair, was rail thin unlike most guys my age, and my voice never really broke that much.

“Zilch, Alan,” Mitch whispered to tall guy—Alan, apparently—as headphones girl’s bag thumped onto the table.

Alan snarled out in frustration, “Goddammit, I needed... _Fuck_! And you! What the hell do you want?”

“To walk away,” I bluntly answered, deciding there was no point beating around the bush. I had to work tonight, so getting in a fight was the last thing I needed right now.

To my disappointment, Alan didn’t want to play ball. “I’m sorry,” he said, and he surprisingly sounded sincere, “but I’ve been burned before, so we’re going to have to teach you to be quiet first.”

 _Well, this is disappointing,_ I thought to myself as Alan’s hangers-on began to stalk my way. Ah well. Yan wouldn’t let me on the floor with a shiner, so I would have to take the initiative. I doubted headphones girl would mind, under the circumstances, and it had to be too dark for anybody to see, should someone had chanced by.

Mook 1—What was his name again? Mike or something? Marcus? Oh, who the hell cares—got to me first and reached out to grab me.

_click_

I slid my left foot forward as I slightly bent my knees to go under his outstretched hand, throwing my arms back to let my backpack fall off while I simultaneously dropped my cane. The moment the strap passed my right hand, I jabbed my right fist up to smash into his chin with enough force to knock him off his feet, albeit barely. He was out before he hit the ground.

_click_

Mook 2 was frozen on the spot, likely from the shock of seeing me send his friend on a date with the ground, but he recovered as I closed the distance between us and managed to block my left uppercut at his chin. I feinted with another right jab as I planted my right foot between us, and like the amateur I figured he would be, he devoted his full guard to deflecting the jab leaving him wide open to my foot slamming into his kidney. He too collapsed, and I delivered a follow up kick with the side of my foot to his chin, knocking him out like his counterpart.

Silence hung in the air for a moment. Alan broke the silence with another snarl of frustration as he thrust headphones girl aside, causing her to cry out in pain as something she was wearing caught on the table and caused her to strike the bench on her way to the ground.

_click_

I renewed my assessment of Alan as he stalked over. He wasn’t just tall as hell; he was _stacked_. Why was a guy like this attending community college instead of living it up at university on some sports scholarship? Was he just that bad at sports that he couldn’t put his build to use? Wait, right. If he was a big enough user that he felt the need to try and rob somebody in the pursuit of his next high, then he probably couldn’t pass a drug test to save his life. Actually maybe that’s why he was so built? If you’re already dabbling in illegal drugs, starting steroid use too probably wasn’t that much of a stretch.

“You some karate type?” he asked as he pulled to a stop, a short distance away.

I entirely failed to hold in a groan. “Really?” I asked in exasperation. “It’s called ‘street fighting.’ What, you think I know karate because I’m Japanese?”

He didn’t bother to reply with words, instead answering with a probing jab that I slipped around before he hastily pulled back when I tried to punch his elbow. I was a bit surprised at his speed, honestly. He wasn’t _fast_ , but he certainly wasn’t as slow as I would have expected from a guy his size.

 _Still, there’s a big weight class difference here,_ I thought to myself. I could end this, no doubt, but I couldn’t walk into Ginza with a visible injury again... We needed that money. “You could just walk away,” I tried, my guard firmly in place as I tracked Alan, who was slowly stalking around me. “See, the way I figure it is you went after headphones girl over there instead of meeting a dealer in the city because you’re low on cash and thought this was lower risk than trying to rob a dealer.” I paused for a moment, waiting for a reply. When none came, I added, “I really think it should be obvious by now that this isn’t going to go well for you.”

He didn’t reply for a moment but finally replied with a weary voice, “I _can’t_ trust you. I have to _make_ you listen.”

He lashed out then with a vicious combo of punches. Hearing the approach, I began to click my tongue against the roof of my mouth as I slid around his right jab before jumping back and away from the left hook that followed. The brute didn’t relent this time, throwing caution to the wind as he charged forward while throwing a right hook that sizzled through the air. I took the opening, twisting back and using the centripetal force to slam my right elbow back into his own right elbow. As he howled in pain and stumbled to the side, I drove my right foot into the ground to kill my rightwards rotation and drive myself forward for a follow up. I almost didn’t hear the rebound from my click in time, just barely throwing myself to the left as he sent a powerful kick straight at me. I tucked my head and rolled over my right shoulder on the landing, preserving the momentum to bring myself to my feet, facing back the way I’d come from.

He resumed his pacing around me, shaking out his no doubt numb right arm, while I kept softly clicking away and slowly turning on the spot to keep myself facing him. A soft groan behind me reminded me that I really needed to end this ASAP. I had certainly given both of his toadies mild concussions, but that was only a guarantee they wouldn’t be much use in a fight if they got back up. They might manage the wherewithal to use a phone to call for help, or they might have concealed weapons they hadn’t broken out yet. I wanted to be out of here before they were getting back up. Hell, for that matter, I really needed to be on my way to Ginza. I’d only really had long enough for a short meal break, since I didn’t trust the city transit system to stick to their time schedule. Only an idiot would.

I turned to ‘look’ over my left shoulder at the mook who’d groaned, and my opponent took the bait, charging forward to take advantage of my apparent inattention. He swung another right punch that would have been devastating if it had ever managed to connect, but I was already swiftly bending my knees, safely edging under the blow. With a grunt I threw my right shoulder into his diaphragm while hooking my right arm under his groin, then—using his own momentum against him—I threw him over my right shoulder. He hadn’t anticipated the move at all, and I had only imparted enough twist to get his heavy bulk over me, so he landed on his head with his body crashing down after. With a final click to ensure I had the positioning right, I stepped forward and swung my right foot into the side of his head.

Two back-to-back headblows apparently did the trick, since he didn’t stir after that.

 _Well, that was satisfying_ , I thought as I clicked to locate my bag and white cane before scooping them up. I poked tall guy’s stomach with the end of my cane, waiting for a few moments until I’d felt him draw breath twice. “Good enough.”

I turned to the path leading north and began the trek to the bus stop on the west side of campus, the names of the three idiots already slipping away. I couldn’t be bothered to remember anyone who’d provided such a forgettable fight.

* * *

It wasn’t until I was settling into my seat on the bus, resigning myself to torture of listening to the other passengers, that I heard her—or rather, the sound of her ridiculously loud headphones. _Right, I totally forgot about her._

“Is this seat taken?” she asked before all but throwing herself into the seat to my right without waiting for a response. Not that I think she could have heard any response I might have made. Seriously, how in the world could she hear _anything_ with those things over her ears?

I opened my mouth to respond that yes, it was taken by my imaginary friend Godfrey and if she could kindly get off his lap that’d be swell when all the noise around us completely vanished. The people, the heavy drone of the bus’ motor, the traffic around us— _everything_.

“What the—?” I started to utter before realizing that I couldn’t hear myself. I clicked and tensed when I got no feedback at all. Before I could do anything rash, a sound like a tape fast forwarding filled my ears except the volume was kicked up to 11. I cried out involuntarily at the pain and silently, as once again seemingly no sound escaped me, both of my hands clapping over my ears. I heard headphones girl wince on my left— _on the opposite side of where she was_ —before all the noise abruptly returned but echoing in a way that made me feel like everything around me was at one end of a long tunnel while I was at the other end.

“She’s just got a headache,” I heard my unwanted companion say, her echoing voice seeming to be directed to her right and away from me. Reassuring someone? “All good, thanks!”

I felt her arm snake around my back as she pulled me into her side in what I suppose was supposed to reinforce the notion we knew each other. I barely resisted the urge to jab her kidney with my elbow. _Witnesses..._ “I don’t know how you’re doing... whatever it is you’re doing to the sound,” I hissed, massaging my temples to ease the headache that had started to blossom in actuality. “But stop it before I break something—namely _you_.”

“Trust me, I’m trying to fix it,” she hissed right back, her face now clearly directed at me, “This shite just started happening to me the day before yesterday. I’m not exactly chuffed about having trouble either.” Despite her protests, the sound distortion did seem to ease up a bit while she spoke. By the time she’d stopped, the surrounding noise came across to me more like it was from the other end of a 4 to 5 meter long hallway.

“The fuck even are you?” I muttered as I leaned forward to try and escape the arm around my shoulders, which she stubbornly kept in place, leaning forward to match me. “Setting aside the fact you’re _manipulating sound_ for a second, you’re tossing around words like ‘shite’ and ‘chuffed,’ but you don’t sound like any Brit I’ve ever heard.”

“Well that’s rude!” she indignantly replied. “I’ll have you know I _am_ British, thank you very much.”

“Whatever,” I dismissed. I didn’t really care anyway “Just tell me what the hell you want, then please go violate nature somewhere else.”

We sat there in silence for a minute, the sound around us finally settling into normalcy only occasionally warping in some minor way. The bus’ PA dinged, announcing the next stop was Lorde Street, and I groaned. Somewhere in the midst of all that nonsense I’d missed my transfer. Of course. _How far past Washington Avenue was Lorde Street again? Can I jog back and make it in time?_

I started to reach behind myself to grab the pull-wire and signal the driver to stop, when headphones girl finally spoke, her voice quiet and serious. “I wanted to, you know, thank you for saving my hide back there. Doing a bit of a rubbish job, sorry.”

I opened my mouth to agree that yes, she was indeed doing a very bad job of thanking me, when I finally placed Lorde Street on my mental map of Santa Sofia. _Seriously_? I thought to myself, _How did I miss my stop by that much?_ I was about to resign myself to a frustrating jog back to the Washington Avenue stop, but I realized I maybe didn’t have to after all. “You can make it up to me by paying for a taxi to Ginza. I missed my stop.”

“Oh! No problem.” I could hear the small bit of happiness that’d slipped into her tone as she tugged on the pull-wire.

A few minutes later, I found myself the unwitting occupant of a rideshare together with headphones girl, who had joined me in the car despite the fact I really hadn’t meant for her to stick around. Still, I was going to arrive to work early for once, so I elected to not complain. She gave the driver the name of the place we were going, so he had more to go off of then just an address, then we were off.

We sat there in silence for a minute. Well, as silent as it could possibly be with her headphones spitting out some tune from their place around her neck. I seriously couldn’t understand the appeal.

“So I’ll admit to being a bit confused,” she mumbled after a minute, the noise outside the car fluctuating for a moment before settling again. “Why exactly are you carrying around an ID cane?”

The non-sequitur caught me off guard, in part because she’d thrown out what I presumed was another british-ism. “You mean my white cane?” When I heard her nod, I simply replied. “I’m blind.”

What was that phrase Masuyo used? ‘Slack-jawed?’ I couldn’t see her expression, but the sputtering that followed left me with the impression it was probably an appropriate descriptor. “But _how_ ?!” she finally managed to say, her voice a low whisper as I heard her headphones shift around her neck as she turned to look at the driver. She turned back to my ear and added, “You did... _that_ back at campus!”

At least she had the tact to not blab about my assault and battery of three guys in earshot of somebody. “That I did,” I replied, purposefully ignoring her question.

Most people treat you differently once they find out you’re legally disabled. I cannot begin to express how infuriating it is, even when people are amazed at ‘how I’ve overcome it.’ To be frank, those people were often just as bad as, if not worse than, the ‘pitiers’—which should tell you something, since I really, _really_ hate people who think I’m on some lower plain of existence and need their godforsaken pity. It should come as no surprise that my inability to tolerate that sort of person played no small part in my essentially non-existent social circle.

“Huh,” she said after another minute of silence. “Well, okay then. You know, I never got your name—oh _bloody hell_ , I never even gave you _my_ name! Good god, that’s rude of me!” She snatched up my hand and gave it a firm shake. “Name’s Melantha Dodge, call me Mel. Really sorry about. Slipped my mind, what with the...” she paused, a subtle shift of her head indicating she was glancing at the driver. The sound around us grew quieter. “... trouble with sound manipulation and all,” she finished lowly.

“Jun,” I said without thinking, finding myself a tad bemused by her at this point. “Kawahashi.”

I was starting to get the impression that Mel Dodge was, in fact, not ‘most people.’


	2. Dealt In, 01.02—Mel

Jun Kawahashi was an enigma, I decided, as I watched her—him, I reminded myself for the umpteenth time that evening, after Jun pointed out his kimono, which I had immediately declared ‘just the prettiest thing ever,’ was actually a men’s kimono and oh by the by, I’m a bloke too, in case ya missed it, Mel. Right embarrassing, that—flit here and there in the Ginza to give this group their drinks, take this couple’s order, or bring that chef another bottle of whatever the hell that clear liquid was Japanese restaurant chefs spray on the grill before they put the food on it. It had to be some sort of oil right? I mean, part of their show is setting the stuff on fire, so it couldn’t well be water.

What was I...? Oh right—Enigma, Jun, watching. My literal savior, intentional or not, was pretty paradoxical. So one: He was blind, but he all but danced through the mid-sized restaurant with more grace than even the other employees, just softly clicking away like some kind of bat person. Two: He made a point to stress he was a guy, but he had to be at least 5 inches shorter than me, had long and gorgeous black hair—and isn’t that just unfair? Did he even have to try to make it look like that?—and even though he wasn’t all done up and I knew he was a guy, my first thought was still that he was a bird. And three: He was pretty obviously antisocial to a large extent, but you wouldn’t think it, watching him interact with all the customers, who practically adored him. So an enigma. I think that just about summed it up.

Still, I hadn’t managed to make a single, proper friend since moving to Santa Sofia back in June. That’s five whole months of being alone, and I was sick of it, frankly. So right, beggars can’t be choosers.

Jun snapped his fingers at me as he passed by my table, and I realized the area around me sounded like it was underwater. Whoops. I focused a bit and let the tapestry of sound waves—I didn’t know what else to call it, and it really did fit—around me ease back to normal from the wobbly texture it had a few seconds ago. I started to shoot him a grateful look before I realized both that he’d already flitted off to greet some newcomers at the door and that, duh, he couldn’t have seen me anyway. That’d take a bit of getting used to.

I idly plucked another california roll off my plate and popped it in my mouth, a ‘mmm’ of contentment escaping me. Jun released a small huff of a laugh at that, somehow having heard me from half the restaurant away. Which really seemed unfair, when you took into account the fact I could only hear him due to having figured out how to use my power—That’s right, ladies and gents, drink it in. I have a super power! Woohoo!—to pin his pattern on the tapestry to mine. Or maybe that pin made the connection two-ways? Huh. The moment I got this whole power business properly under control, I badly needed to start experimenting or something.

As Jun led the newcomers over to a table in the sushi section with me, I took a moment to appreciate his kimono again. It really was a pretty kimono. I still didn’t quite see how it being a men’s kimono was supposed to make a difference, but Jun had seemed insistent it did. The base was navy blue, and it was practically covered in a white pattern of some long, oriental-style dragon, the segments broken up by the cloth folding here, there, and everywhere. Okay, so in hindsight it was certainly different from the other waitress’—he’s a guy, Mel, that means he’s not a waitress—from his female coworker’s turquoise, sakura petal covered kimono, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t pretty. They’re both pretty, thank you kindly.

“You don’t even realize you’re talking aloud, do you?” I heard Jun whisper in my ear, startling me into dropping my next roll. When did I even pick that up and where... Oh. Other side of the restaurant. Power. Right. Sooner or later I’ll remember I have a super power—I have a super power!

“Obviously not,” I whispered back with a grin. I still didn’t know if he was ear Jesus or could just hear me due to my power, but for the moment, it didn’t really matter. “My dearest Jun, I think you’ve mistaken me for someone who’s altogether there. Have you met me? Oh right, just an hour or two ago, carry on then.” I snatched up my last roll and enjoyed the heavenly flavor. God, that was exactly what I needed to make up for the bloody awful headache my power had given me that morning from going haywire. Yup, just that. That’s definitely the only awful thing that happened to me today. Any word to the contrary is a load of tosh. “What exactly is that sushi chef putting in these? Cocaine? It’s cocaine, isn’t it? Oh god, is this how mom and pop stores compete with chains? By addicting customers with cocaine rolls, so they can’t help but come back?”

“You mean the Itamae,” he responded completely ignoring my joke. Hmph, the sourpuss. “We don’t have a ‘sushi chef.’ We have an itamae. Plebeian.”

“Oh ho, you better be careful,” I chirped, resisting the urge to pull my headphones up as one of my favorites—Hey Jude—came up in the shuffle. Trying to make a friend here, Mel, even if he is weird. “That came dangerously close to sounding like humor. I hear it’s painful to grow a funny bone once you’ve reached uni-age.”

Jun didn’t respond for a minute as he returned to the group he’d seated near me just a minute ago, taking their orders and delivering them to the ‘Eetaymay’—or however it’s spelled. “It’s a cultural thing,” he eventually replied, once again purposefully ignoring my quip. My grin grew just a bit wider. It was gonna be fun bouncing jokes off of Mister Snark.

“Hey Jude, don’t be afraid...” rang out from my headphones just a tad bit louder than they should’ve been. My eyebrow may have twitched as I pushed the fabric back down the Z-axis the tapestry was stretched across in my mind.

Jun’s voice cut over the following lyrics as I got the volume back under control. “If you want a ‘sushi chef,’ then you can go to the Kabuto downtown and enjoy the kuzu—” damn, there was some venom in the way he said that “—they call sushi. A real itamae trains years before they’re serving you sushi.”

Okay, note to self: Never admit, ever, that I’ve totally eaten loads at Kabuto. I popped a perfectly prepared segment of fish into my mouth and quite possibly made an embarrassing sound that totally didn’t draw the attention of the couple nearby.

Other note to self: Abuse hopefully growing new friendship with Jun as an excuse to come out this way more ‘cause I think this red snapper just snapped up my heart.

Jun dropped by my table with a pitcher of water and refilled my glass without my even needing to ask, the picture of an elegant waitress—waiter. “Still talking aloud,” he remarked, just a hint of coldness slipping into the words.

I gulped. 

Other, other note to self, I thought, being extra careful to ensure I was only thinking the words. Get better at keeping internal monologue actually internal. Scheisse.

“The minute you let her under your skin... then you begin to make it better,” my headphones sang on, oblivious.

Oh shut up, McCartney.

* * *

“So do blind people have mobiles?” I asked when Jun finally slipped out the back entrance of the restaurant. He stiffened a bit at that, and I wondered if I’d been too blunt or if, as I suspected, he’d not expected me to hang around after the restaurant closed. Maybe both? Meh. I suppose it didn’t matter either way, really.

“Yes, I have a cellphone,” Jun answered at length before he released a louder click than he’d used in the restaurant and began stalking off to towards the bus stop.

I fell into step beside him, careful to leave just a bit of space. I remembered Jun trying to escape my arm on the bus earlier, and in hindsight, that wasn’t exactly the smoothest of moves. “Right then, I’ll give you my number, you give me yours?”

“Why?”

The coldness in that single word made me wilt a bit. Trying to rally, I responded. “Look, I can tell you’re not the most social butterfly. I’m not either, really—I’m sure you noticed that by now—but that just means... uh... we can be less lonely together or something?” 

He didn’t react to that at all. Okay, rally attempt failed. Shite. My shoulders slumped. “At least tell me what I did wrong? I suck at this whole ‘making friends’ thing, and I could really use one, so feedback is appreciated.” Probably shouldn’t have admitted to being desperate, Mel. Very smooth. “I mean, was it the ‘I ate a lot at Kabuto’ bit? Is my power screwing with your ability to move around?”

We had reached the bus stop by that point, and Jun took a seat without looking at me. Then again, would he have bothered even without the awkward topic of conversation? He looked at the customers in Ginza when they spoke, but I got the feeling he only did that for customer service reasons. The corners of my eyes were prickling, but I steadfastly refused to let a single tear drop. God, Mel, why did you even bother? Might not even stick around after next semester, so you’d just be losing another friend in the end... I pulled out my phone, opened the app drawer, and started the rideshare app. There was no way I was waiting for the next bus.

“I don’t really empathize with other people,” Jun abruptly said, catching me so off guard I nearly dropped my phone. That was... really rather blunt. And weird, but I suppose that fit Jun’s theme. “My sister’s going to find about you eventually, and I’ll never hear the end of it if she finds out I didn’t explain.”

I waited for him to say more, since that didn’t explain anything, in my opinion, but he seemed to think it did and added nothing further. The bus chose that moment to round the corner, and I glanced down at the phone in my hand, rideshare app ready to hail a ride.

I locked the phone and followed Jun onto the bus, swiping my student ID card to pay the fare. I must be a masochist. Or even more desperate than I’d thought.

I didn’t miss the way Jun cringed slightly away from a couple arguing loudly in the middle of the bus, and as he carefully settled into a seat in the back corner and collapsed his ID cane, I flopped down next to him, isolated our patterns in the fabric, and mentally snipped us off from the rest of the cloth. Silence descended, and I immediately regretted my choice, realizing I had no idea if I could fix that later. Something about our edges caught my eye, and I squinted at them for a second before relaxing. A thread span from each of us to the rest of the tapestry, and something told me that thread was all I needed to mend my alteration later, though I didn’t even remotely understand why. My power was more than a little bit nonsensical.

“Nonsensical?” Jun said, his voice breaking the silence.

I turned my attention back to him, and I realized our patterns were still bound together from the restaurant. Doing my best to ignore the fact I still hadn’t gotten a straight answer out of him yet, I replied, “All the sound around us, it’s like a tapestry to me. I just cut us off from the rest, but there’s a bit there I think I can use to piece it back together.”

“You think?”

I paled a bit as I realized that I had almost unintentionally ruined Jun’s ability to move about unhindered. I shoved his pattern back into the tapestry, and the thread that had remained stitched back to the rest. I tugged it all back apart, and the stitch thread remained.

“I know,” I answered, doing my best to hide how relieved I was. No sense giving him any more ammo for the coming conversation. “So I need you to explain how having trouble empathizing means we can’t share numbers and—” be friends “—hang out sometimes.”

“I need to transfer at Miller Street. Since I can’t hear anything but you, you’re going to have to pull the wire for the stop.”

“Stalling,” I replied, secretly thankful he’d reminded me. Kind of forgot my tweak would cause that problem. Would’ve been right embarrassing to repeat my mistake from earlier!

It seemed he didn’t mind, since my words earned me a hint of a smirk. “You want my number because you want us to be friends.” I opened my mouth to—what, lie? Didn’t matter, since Jun bulldozed onward. “Don’t bother denying it. As I mentioned several times, you kept monologuing aloud at Ginza, so you have literally already told me what you’re angling for.” Well, so much for subtlety. Way to queer your own pitch, Mel. 

He let his head rest against the glass window just a bit, and I was momentarily caught off guard. After a whole evening watching him be the perfectly composed employee, I found the movement dissonant with the mental picture of him I’d been piecing together. Was he upset? Just tired? Did he just want to touch the cool glass because it’s November in a city by the water and even in California that meant meant the night was a bit chilly and that apparently meant the city government in its infinite wisdom had decided it necessary to turn the heat on all the city transit buses up to full blast?

My social skills are truly up to the task of engaging in basic conversation with another human being. Truly.

The silence stretched on for a minute, and I was struck with the sudden fear that I’d said all that aloud. Again. My track record for the evening made that a legitimate fear. The overhead display in the middle of the bus flashed the word Miller, so I hastily reached over my companion to tug on the pull-cord. I gave our patterns a gentle nudge back into the tapestry and let the stitch thread do its thing—I have a superpower! That wasn’t getting old anytime soon—while I tried to pull up my mental map of Santa Sofia’s bus routes. I hadn’t figured out the right path home by the time we stepped off the bus, so I gave it up as a bad job, figuring I could just catch a rideshare home.

Jun clicked once then started off across the street to the northbound bus stop across the street. I almost scolded him for not looking both ways before I realized there were no car patterns coming our way in the tapestry and also duh, I’m an idiot, he probably had no problem hearing any oncoming cars.

“People call someone their friend because, among other things, that person cares about them and their problems,” he said when we reached the stop, his voice quiet. “You don’t want my number because I literally do not give a shit about you or your problems.”

That’s a very good point, I had to agree. It certainly explained why he just waltzed off after the fight earlier, either forgetting I was there or not caring enough to check on me. Still... Maybe I’d missed it somewhere along the way, since we’d started this conversation almost 10 minutes ago by now, but, “I’m not hearing you say you don’t want a friend.”

I’m pretty sure I caught him off guard with that remark. Kinda hard to tell, really, since he didn’t seem to make the same sorts of facial cues that most people unconsciously made in conversation. Our dark surroundings courtesy the damaged street light overhead didn’t help matters. Still, I had plenty of practice working around similar limitations thanks to my parents, so I’d figure him out eventually. Err, if this whole conversation went well, that is.

“You want a friend that doesn’t care about you?” Jun asked, his tone practically dripping with disbelief.

Is that as close as he can get to actually saying yes? “Well when you put it that way, it sounds... basically as bad as it is, I guess,” I replied, trying to make the admission casual. Not sure I was succeeding, but I’d already bollixed up basically every last bit of our conversation since we left Ginza, so in for a penny, in for a pound. “I probably admitted at least some of this aloud by accident by now, so sod it: I haven’t had a friend since I moved here at the start of summer. I am lonely, so at this point, I’m frankly looking for a warm body.” 

I hesitated a moment. He’d made several really blunt remarks earlier, so maybe he’d appreciate the honesty? “Besides, you’re interesting, and having someone around who could probably kick any would-be mugger’s arse isn’t a bad idea, after earlier today.” 

It was halting at first, but to my surprise—and delight, I realized—Jun began to break down into laughter. A high, tinkling sort of laugh that suited his small frame and oh god please tell me I didn’t say that aloud this time.

If I had, he didn’t seem to notice or care. “I suppose I can just be a warm body.”


	3. Dealt In, 01.a—Jaden

There were days that Jaden really hated their job. Being shouted at by an insecure, pasty-ass motherfucker who could not take rejection was rapidly making this one of them.

“What the fuck kind of excuse is that?” the wannabe Client screamed as he planted his palms on their desk and leaned over it in a misguided attempt to be menacing, all but spitting in their face. Jaden carefully resisted the urge to lean back in their chair enough to escape any wayward spittle. Wouldn’t do to give him the misconception they were afraid of him. “What’s it really? You trying to hold out for more money or something?”

“I’m pretty sure I was crystal clear when I said it the first time,” Jaden replied in a dry tone that didn’t even remotely cover up their distaste. “I couldn’t care less whether your wife is or is not cheating on you.” Turning to the monitor on their desk, they gestured idly at the door leading out of Webster Investigations’ small greeting room/office. “Now get out of my office. I have work to do.”

Jaden saw him sneer in the corner of their eye before turning to stomp out like the child in a grown-up’s body he was. Tugging the door open, the guy paused and tossed over his shoulder, “It’s some kind of ‘bitch code’ thing, isn’t it? Well fuck you, ya dumb ho.” He slammed the heavy wooden door on the way out.

“Seriously?” they muttered. “Don’t damage my door just ‘cause you got anger issues. And ‘dumb ho?’ Just ugh.” They stood with a sigh and undocked their laptop before throwing it in their messenger bag, stalking over to the coat rack by the door, and throwing their black trench coat over their arm. They did, in fact, have work to do, and that pointless waste of time had kept them from it long enough. They weren't going to prove the ‘Elf King’ existed sitting in their office.

They flipped the deadbolt on their office door into the locked position then folded into it with practiced ease. Instead of unfolding into the hallway and following after Mr. Insecure to the elevators between their office and the small IT repair office across the way, they folded from the wall into the floor and proceeded to follow the chain of surfaces between there and the emergency fire exit door at the bottom of the stairwell at the back of the building. Using their disembodied vision to verify that no one was in the stairwell, they unfolded from the wall into the space in front of the door. They then pulled on their coat, setting their bag down briefly to do so, and pushed open the exit door that ought to have set off an alarm but hadn’t worked the past 3 years they’d had an office in the building.

“Good afternoon, Jaden,” said an unfortunately familiar voice, sounding all too cheery. “That guy sure didn’t sound too happy, eh?”

“I was hoping to make it one.” Jaden barely held back a scowl as they turned to face the two agents waiting for them in the alleyway. “With you two here, spying on my conversations with my Clients, how could it possibly get better? What are you doing here, Agents Ass and Hole? Wanted some of that California air?”

“You’d think,” Agent Alexander said with a chuckle as he pushed off the wall he’d been leaning against next to Agent Holloway, “that joke would get old after awhile, but you still somehow get a laugh out of me every time. You sure your power isn’t making bad jokes be funny?”

Jaden tensed at that, turning to toss a quick glance over their shoulder to check for any onlookers before directing a glare at Alexander. “The fuck?” they hissed. “Ain’t you jokers supposed to keep that shit under wraps?”

Holloway scoffed from where she’d been leaning against the wall since Jaden had stepped into the alley. Expressive as always.

“With you folding all over the place, the secret is obviously safe with you,” Alexander replied, his tone laced with condescension and his smile twisting into a smirk. “Now, are you going to invite us in? I’ve been dying to try out your new coffeemaker.”

“I’d really rather not,” Jaden replied, trying for a cool tone to hide their nervousness.

His smirk never falling, Alexander stepped right up into Jaden’s face, forcing them to step back flat against the wall and their eyes to unconsciously widen in fear.

“Oh, I insist.”

* * *

Jaden’s power might have been folding things together, but that certainly didn’t stop them from trying to burn a hole right through Holloway’s head with their eyes when she snatched Jaden’s laptop out of the bag still draped over their shoulder, plopped into one of the chairs in front of the desk, and stuck some sort of USB drive in the side before sliding the device onto the desk. The lid was shut, but they knew there wouldn’t be any indication on the screen of whatever virus the electronic had been infected with.

“Did your mama never teach you any goddamn manners?” they muttered before walking around the desk and flopping bonelessly into their awaiting chair.

“You’ll have to excuse Agent Holloway,” Alexander said with a feigned sigh. “I assure you she’ll attend an Agency sensitivity seminar the moment we’re back in Washington. Kids these days...”

That spiked Jaden’s curiosity. Holloway _did_ look like she wasn’t that much older than their own age. They didn’t know for sure if it was true but had long suspected that most of the Federal Card Agency’s agents were, in fact, cards themselves. If that was true, then they and Holloway were likely part of the same hand. Something to ponder another time.

Jaden glanced from the stereotypical white guy Alexander lazily lounging in their chair like some overgrown feline to the stiff, straight-backed middle eastern Holloway and back. “So. I’ve ‘invited’ you in. What do you want?”

“Maybe we ought to have you join Holloway in that sensitivity seminar, hm, Jaden?” Alexander reproached with faux disapproval, a grin spreading across his face as he idly stretched. “You’d think you’d be nicer to the people who paid your way through undergrad and got you that sweet paid internship.  But since you _so kindly_ asked, we have a job for you.”

Jaden stiffened. It was bad enough the FCA had showed up here at all, since they wanted absolutely nothing to do with that kind of shady business. But a _job_? “You’re joking.”

“No, no, I thought we had agreed you were the one with the joke power,” he replied, his tone mocking.

They didn’t miss the double meaning. “If you thought my power was a ‘joke,’” they practically growled, “then you wouldn’t have bothered coming here and forcing your way into my office.” The existence of cards was an open secret, since some of them flaunted their powers quite openly, but most of the _details_ about powers were still secret, since the FCA and other government’s equivalents around the world black-bagged such individuals and kept them under lock and key to exploit in the name of all the stereotypical patriotic bullshit that got spooks’ rocks off. It was a small miracle Jaden had managed to escape that same fate, and it still haunted them how they had managed it.

“We have reason to suspect another hand’s been dealt,” Alexander said, his tone still playful. “Here, in the US, early hours this morning. A few potential tables have been identified, and one of them is the Santa Sofia area. _You_ are going to investigate and report your findings to us. We’re benevolent overlords, so you’ll be paid. Lucky you.”

No. No, no, no, _no_. This was Buffalo all over again. Jaden floundered for a moment, searching for some excuse that might be reasonable enough to convince Alexander they weren’t worth the Agency’s time. “I really think an Agent would be better. I don’t have half your Agents’ skill, and my Clients—”

“I’ll look forward to your report, Jaden,” Alexander cut in, his voice now cold as ice. Jaden blanched. He hadn’t moved an inch, but where before he had seemed like some lazy house cat lounging in their chair, he now had the air of a tiger ready to maul its prey.

Jaden carefully resisted the temptation to glance at the desk drawer where their gun lay waiting. They’d be dead—or worse—before they could ever draw it. Down that road lay the ruin of what remained of their hopes and dreams. One wrong move now, and they’d disappear to whatever hell hole the Agency put people like them in.

“U-understood,” Jaden replied.

There were days that Jaden really hated their job, but this day had become much, much worse than any other could compare.


	4. Dealt In, 01.03—Jun

_ I think I should be dead right now. _

Maybe a bit of an exaggeration, but I felt justified in thinking it under the circumstances. I hadn’t slept in over a week, and I had no idea what the fuck was going on. Insomnia was not a new concept for me on account of being blind for as long as I could remember—the real reason Dr. Miller hadn’t put up a fuss about doling out a script for sleeping pills—but I had  _ never _ been unable to sleep for this long. What was weirder, my body didn’t seem fazed by it at all. The whole reason I had a history of pill-induced sleep was because my insomnia often lead to me being groggy, which among other things severely impacted my ability to feel out my environment. I think the longest I’d gone without sleep was three days or so at max, and I’d been walking into things left and right by the time I had finally succumbed to slumber. The day I’d gone to see Dr. Miller was the third day without sleep, so I was currently pushing triple that without issue.

I found myself surprisingly frustrated with my inability to understand  _ why  _ I couldn’t sleep. I didn’t like not knowing something about myself. I already couldn’t understand other people — I should  _ at least _ be able to understand myself. Yet the only explanation I could come up with likewise defied explanation.

Under the desk, I jammed my thumbnail into the pad of my index finger with enough force to easily break the skin, and I felt a single drop of blood hit the other hand waiting below before the small wound had vanished. Was no longer needing to sleep a side effect of my power?

I heard the walking racket enter the classroom, overly loud electronica seeping into the world from her ever present headphones. It didn’t take long before the noise slid around the back of my aisle-side seat and dropped into the one next to me. I could clearly distinguish the pounding bass line plodding along underneath the dancing guitar while the singer proclaimed,   _ It doesn’t matter if you like it or not, it doesn’t matter if you don’t wanna play my game... _ Perhaps I should borrow the torture device for a moment? I was firmly confident a mere fragment of a second upon my ears would be all it took to knock me unconscious, succeeding where the sleeping pills had not.

“Morning!” the living cacophony otherwise known as Mel chirped just a tad too loudly. Her tone was entirely too cheerful considering we would imminently be subjected to 90 minutes of nasally droning lecture about the mid 20th century. Also, her response was utterly inappropriate it was just short of 4 p.m.

“It’s practically evening,” I replied in exasperation.

“Well,” she commented quite cheekily. “It sounds like someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed.”

My thoughts from moments prior swam to the forefront of my mind and without thinking, I said, “I didn’t sleep at all, actually.”

“Oh? You have a nightmare or something?”   


I grimaced a bit, not having wanted to bring up the topic when I still wasn’t sure what to think about it myself. Still, now that I’d put it out there, however inadvertently... I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to get an outsider’s perspective. Our family of three had no communal PC I could use to research the side effects of not sleeping for 9 days, and though my schedule had technically freed up considerably in light of the time I was no longer sleeping, I still had little to no time during the city and college libraries’ hours of operation to use the accessibility PCs. Masuyo had a lower end laptop I’d scrounged up the funds to buy that she used for her classwork assignments, but I didn’t know the password, and I couldn’t ask her to use it without the topic of  _ why _ coming up.

“No,” I answered, though ironically I vaguely recalled having a nightmare the last time I  _ had _ slept. Hadn’t Masuyo had one that same night too? I tapped my ear, and after a moment, the world of sounds around us pulled away to the end of a tunnel. I had to admit her power had its uses, now that she had gotten more control over it. I didn’t see the point of adjusting my busy schedule to accommodate her wanting to spend time with me, so we hadn’t ‘hung out’ or whatever. Nevertheless, she had claimed a table at Ginza every night I had a shift the past week and had been practicing manipulating the restaurant’s sound in subtle ways that only I really noticed. “Has your power been giving you any trouble with sleeping?”

“No...” she said at length. “I can’t say I’ve noticed anything like that. But why would... You think my power is affecting your ability to sleep or something?”

“Something like that. I haven’t slept at all since the 1st, so it lines up.”

She sputtered for a moment, clearly caught off guard. “You’re  _ joking _ !” she hissed at me as I heard the sounds of the world snap back into place, our history professor’s words reaching my ears mid sentence. Annoying. It didn’t sound like he’d been talking for long, but she really needed to work on timing.

* * *

“I don’t get it,” Mel remarked as we began the trek across campus to the bus stop, the heat from the sun above thankfully offsetting the slight chill of the November wind blowing in from the coast on the other side of the city. “Why aren’t they... doing anything?”

“Who is ‘they?’”

“Those blokes from the day we met.” I could hear disbelief and a touch of worry in her tone, which didn’t quite make sense to me. “They were back in class today, and I thought for sure they’d have, you know,  _ retaliated _ after class.”

I snorted. “If any ‘retaliation’ comes, it certainly wouldn’t be any time soon, and it frankly isn’t that likely.” I clicked once then twisted my head over my shoulder to click again. There were some people scattered around the general area, but there wasn’t anyone close enough to overhear unless they were passing from the opposite direction. 

Mel’s head was turned towards me, presumably to look at me, and made an easy target. I jabbed my finger into her forehead, eliciting a surprised, indignant yelp from her. “What was that for, you arse?” she snarked.

I smirked. “Mild concussion and loss of consciousness. They probably don’t remember what happened well, if at all, and but even if they did, it takes weeks to months to fully recover from a concussion.”

She rubbed her forehead but didn’t have much to say to that, and I didn’t care to add anything further. The trip across the city towards the docks was uneventful, and soon enough the watery noise of the decorative koi pond in Ginza’s entrance filled my ears. Mel grabbed a table in the sushi section as she’d made her habit, and I briefly paused to bow to Hachirou, the Ginza’s Itamae, and the wakita working under him as I passed their station on my way towards the back hallway that lead to the employee dressing rooms.

“Jun-kun,” Hachirou said, calling my attention. I stopped and tilted my head slightly his way, so he’d know I was listening. “Kacho-san is back there with a PI and wanted to see you when you came in. They’re talking about you.”

That gave me pause. Why would a PI be speaking to Yan about me? My earlier conversation with Mel briefly crossed my mind before I dismissed the thought out of hand. I’d meant what I said, and even if I was wrong regarding the timing of any possible revenge attempts, hiring a PI to investigate me didn’t quite fit my mental image of tall guy and his mooks.

“I told you!” I heard Mel whisper in my ear, the worried tone from earlier back.

“Oh?” I replied, ignoring her. Her power had its uses, but it was annoying to have her spying on my conversations. “That’s odd. Thank you for letting me know. I believe I’ll go join them.”

I resumed my trek towards the dressing rooms and slipped off the main floor into the hallway, but instead of going to the dressing room, I continued past to the manager’s—Yan’s—office at the end of the hall. The sound was muffled, but I could him hear speaking for a moment before an unfamiliar voice responded.  _ Black, twenties or thirties, female, _ I noted as I analyzed the speaker’s timbre and pitch while knocking on the door and announcing my presence. I had known Yan most of my life, so he might not throw my ass out the door if he caught me eavesdropping, but it’d be a near thing. He was a generally amiable man, but he was also the proud, honorable type that wouldn’t look kindly on such sneaky behavior. The risk-reward balance wasn’t worth it when my job was on the line.

The conversation lulled for a moment before I heard the firm voice of Yan answer, “Come in.”

I opened the door and clicked the moment it was wide enough for me to get a good read on the office. Just Yan and his guest, no one else. I found myself second guessing my assessment of who I presumed was the PI. They were easily taller than any of Ginza’s staff—somewhere around 150-157cm, it was hard to tell with them sitting—and had a somewhat stocky build with a relatively flat chest. The pitch of the voice had instinctively made me think the PI was a woman, but the physical gender identifiers I could feel out and normally relied on were nebulous.

“Kacho-san,” I said, sketching a bow towards Yan. “Hachirou-san mentioned you may have need of me?” Not quite what he’d said, but close enough.

“Ah, Jun-chan,” Yan acknowledged, his voice taking on the fond quality he tended to use when speaking to Masuyo or me. I carefully repressed my anger at his use of ‘chan.’ He had known me since I was a baby and been using the honorific since then, so there was no convincing him to change. I wished he would stop —it evoked unpleasant memories. “We were just talking about you. This is Ms. Jaden Webster. She’s a PI.”

‘Jaden’ shifted at that, almost seeming uncomfortable. Interesting. Alias? Lying about her profession? Those were the only possibilities that fit the situation, and it was impossible to tell which, if either, was true or why she would bother claiming a fake name or job to get a chance to speak with Yan about me. What was the point? I didn’t have enough information to work with, so it would be worse than pointless to call her out on the deceit for the time being. 

“Sorry ‘bout the cloak and dagger,” she said, her heavy coat rustling as she stood and turned to face me while extending her hand.  _ 154-156cm _ , I refined my estimate as I clicked to locate the exact position of her hand and shook it briefly.  _ Strong grip _ . “DA’s cracking down on the on-going drug issue. I can’t go into more detail, but I  _ can _ say your name came up as an anonymous tip about strange behavior. You ain’t the type of person they had in mind when they made the hotline, so I wouldn’t worry too much.”

Plausible. Santa Sofia had a drug problem like any other major city, and that was doubly true for one on the Pacific coast. We weren’t a tourist destination like the nearby San Francisco or Los Angeles, but we had a booming port that infused the city’s economy with much needed lifeblood while simultaneously giving the cartels more routes to get their product into the city. Still, I suspected DA used the police as their feet on the ground, not PIs. I had no idea what sort of rates a PI charged an hour, but I figured it had to be cheaper to have one or two cops do the same task.

“I’m looking her up,” I heard Mel whisper in my ear, and I only just barely mastered the urge to react. It seemed her power worked through walls. While I still needed to talk to her about my private conversations being  _ private _ , she was at least making up for her indiscretion by being handy.

Apparently the silence I’d let drag on didn’t unnerve the PI, as she finally added, sounding more firm than last time, “I gotta confess I’m a bit curious though, now that I’m meeting you. It’s not every day you meet a blind person who can  _ echolocate  _ at all, and you’re good enough at it to be waitstaff. How long have you been able to do this?”

I considered saying nothing, since I didn’t trust the PIs motives—or even that she  _ was _ a PI— but I wasn’t sure if that’d be considered evidence of something damning if she was legitimate. It ultimately didn’t matter, since Yan answered on my behalf. “Since he was a little boy. Retinal cancer before he could even walk.”

I flinched, despite not knowing why. Was it just the unnecessary personal details? I realized I wasn’t sure. I was abruptly reminded of just how angry I was that I didn’t understand my insomnia predicament. I was beginning to truly despise not understanding myself.

The involuntary movement may have been noticed, in which case an explanation was in order, lest the PI start making damnable assumptions. “I don’t like thinking about it,” I tried, hoping I sounded believable. In truth neither my blindness nor my retinal cancer bothered me. I’d been in remission for as long as I could remember, and I got along just fine.

“Jaden Webster is a private investigator from San Francisco,” Mel finally announced, her voice thankfully kept low. “I’ve got a couple pictures here from her agency’s website, but I reckon they wouldn’t do you much good? I’ll keep an eye out, in case she leaves through the front.”

“Well, I should be going,” ‘Jaden’ replied, sounding relieved, though I wasn’t sure why. The floor squeaked lightly under her boots as she turned back towards Yan. “Thank you for your hospitality.”

“Goodbye,” I simply replied before dropping a bow in Yan’s direction and taking my leave.

“I’m sorry we couldn’t be of more help with your investigation...” I heard Yan start to say, his heavy desk chair scraping against the floor as I shut the door and quickly made my way to the dressing room down the hall.

A quick click revealed no one present once I was inside. Since Mel’s powers apparently worked straight through walls... “Tag her,” I said aloud, figuring Mel would hear me and understand, before I set about getting prepared for my shift as usual.

“Got it.”

Her power had some uses.

* * *

Mel ultimately confirmed the person I met had in fact been Jaden Webster, which only left us with more questions. Why is a PI from San Francisco here? Why is she asking questions about me? And most importantly...

“Why is she still here?” I muttered to myself, trying to make sense of it as I brought out a customer’s hot sake. The question continued to plague me as I reached the customer and carefully laid out the small flask and cup with a small smile plastered on my face.

“Thank you, ma’am,” the customer replied, unknowing I was a man. 

The misgendering wasn’t uncommon, at least not here. While it definitely happened outside of work, Ginza’s customers mistook me for a lady nearly half the time. It didn’t matter that I wore a man’s kimono, it didn’t matter if I left my long hair in a basic ponytail instead of the elaborate knots the women on staff apparently wore their hair in, it didn’t matter that I wouldn’t know what to do with makeup if it was placed in my hands, and it for some reason didn’t matter that my voice’s pitch was a tenor. I never complained, however, primarily because Yan would consider it rude in the extreme and wouldn’t stand for it but also because the people who mistook my gender also tended to tip better. 

In light of this axiom, I would sometimes pitch my voice up a bit, tapping into my falsetto while leaving my volume just low enough that any strangeness would be written off as them having misheard me. Some part of me thrilled in that exploitation, the gaming of the system. The rest of the staff didn’t seem to mind, and some of the female waitstaff had actually given me pointers once or twice about ways to perpetuate the illusion. One coworker in particular, Junko, insisted on braiding my hair whenever we were on duty together. I never let her do anything more involved than a simple plait—the sort of thing Masuyo occasionally did to my hair when she got bored at home—since I didn’t want to fall too deep into the illusion. The minor tweaks alone would have set my mother into a tirade about the proper role of the firstborn son and the role of honor in our lives, even here in America, and though she had been dead now for longer than she had been alive in my life, I could feel her influence over me still.

“I still can’t believe you’re more worried about why she’s here than why she’s _ on the bloody roof _ ,” I heard Mel say into my ear, more than a hint of panic present in her voice.

“Also that,” I softly acknowledged once I had started towards the kitchen to retrieve the miso and salads for the table I had collected orders from a few minutes prior. 

The question of why Jaden Webster was on Ginza’s roof was certainly a good question, as was the nature of the power she’d used to get there. I say ‘power’ because there could be no other explanation. Tonight was a shift with Junko, and as she was want to do, she had cornered me earlier in the dressing room after I’d finished donning my kimono and began to tackle my hair. Normally I would have carefully policed her, vetoing her when she invariably tried to suggest something more elaborate, but Mel had abruptly announced that Jaden, who had left out the front a few minutes prior, had ‘bled into the tapestry.’ I let myself get distracted with pondering what that even meant, since Mel’s metaphors for how she visualized her power were strange at best in my opinion, only to be further distracted a minute later when she explained that Jaden was now on the roof of the building. 

By the time I had determined the PI had to have a power, like Mel—some form of teleportation, it seemed—Junko announced she was finished, trailing off into a fit of giggles that I didn’t understand until I moved and I felt my loose hair tickling my neck. A ‘waterfall twist,’ she’d called it and had refused to undo her ‘hard work.’ My shift was starting, so I resigned myself to the strange sensation of having my hair somewhat free.

_ In hindsight,  _ I thought as I left the kitchen with a tray carefully laden with a mix of soup and salad,  _ it makes sense I’ve been misgendered all night. _

“Your phone is ringing,” Mel pointed out as I doled out the customers’ meal starters. I resisted the urge to ask why she felt it necessary to listen in on my phone in the dressing room—or perhaps the dressing room itself, which would just be worse—but it was a near thing.

Yan didn’t allow staff to have their phones with them on the floor, which Junko and some of the other waitstaff often bemoaned when he was out of earshot, but I didn’t mind in the slightest. The only emails I got were related to school or Yamamoto-sensei’s dojo, and the only a few people had my number. No one from the restaurant would be calling, and it obviously wasn’t Mel, so that left Masuyo, Yamamoto-sensei, and Nathan. Masuyo knew my work schedule, Yamamoto-sensei generally emailed me when he wanted to know if I could cover an instructor shift, and it was a nigh zero chance Nathan would call.

“Telemarketer,” I softly declared as I returned the tray to the kitchen.

“No, Masuyo. It’s ringing again.”

That gave me pause. Whenever a known contact was calling my phone, the ringer was set to announce who was calling, but why would Masuyo be calling me during a work shift, much less twice in a row? I quickly clicked out who was where before moving towards the closest employee who wasn’t a chef.

_ Something wrong at the school?  _ I wondered as I told Junko I needed to step off the floor for a moment before heading towards the dressing room.

“She’s calling again.”

Through herculean effort, I managed self restraint until I had passed the threshold and out of the sight of customers, but then I all broke into the quickest sprint I could manage in a kimono, covering the short distance to the dressing room door in seconds before making a beeline for my closet where the still ringing phone lay.

I hurriedly tapped the left hand side of the screen to answer, and when I heard noise from the other end, I all but demanded, “Masuyo?”

When my sister answered, her deathly quiet but hysterical words made by blood run cold.

“They’re going to kill me!”


	5. Dealt In, 01.04—Jun

“Greenlock Towing!” I shouted at the driver, my voice high with panic, as Mel and I all but flung ourselves into the cab she had helped me flag down outside the restaurant.

“I need an actual address,” the cabbie drawled out, unfazed by my tone.

The urge to literally strangle the bastard threatened to overwhelm me, but before I could get out to break in his door’s window and make good on it, Mel cut in, “1313 Hawthorne Boulevard,” presumably having looked up the address earlier while I nearly tore off my kimono and quickly pulled on my casual clothes. She had to repeat the address once more, but he fortunately pulled off not long after.

I _hated_ the fact I’d had to waste time with hailing a cab, but despite being on the south end of the city, the abandoned impound Masuyo had fled into for hiding was still a good distance from Ginza. I had slouched off somewhat on my cardio since I’d stopped regularly visiting Yamamoto-sensei’s dojo, and I wouldn’t be able to help Masuyo if I was a panting, drained wreck by the time I arrived.

“I still don’t get it,” Mel whispered, leaning over to close the distance instead of using her power for once. The discordant melody emanating from her headphones made me want to break them in half. “Why aren’t we calling the police?”

I grit my teeth, trying to ignore the noise, my hand twitching a moment with repressed violence. “You mean besides the fact they’re worse than useless when it comes to dealing with the Arsonists?”

“Ah, pardon me, my ‘outsider’ seems to be showing. How embarrassing. Why would _arsonists_ be hunting down your sister instead of—you know— _starting a fire_ , and why wouldn’t the police be useless dealing with them?”

“Not any arsonists: _The_ Arsonists.” I felt her shrug in confusion and was caught off guard enough that my ire with the situation abated somewhat in the face of my bewilderment. The group wasn’t in the news every night or anything like that, but they were relatively well known amongst Sofians for their... outlandish religious practices. “The American Revelationists of the Rockies, the ARRs, the Arsonists—lunatics who believe their ‘god’ will cleanse everything in fire. Look them up if you want to know more. I’m in no mood to explain.”

She grumbled a bit, but I heard her phone softly click as she unlocked it. The world around me pulled away entirely and Mel’s words practically filled my head, “So maybe not the best time to bring this up, but you ought to know Jaden’s pattern is _in_ our seat. Might change your plans to do... whatever it is you’re about to do.”

In the seat? Well then. _That_ ruled out teleportation.

The noise of the cab snapped back into focus just as quickly as it had left, and I was left to ponder how I’d go about rescuing Masuyo, why The Arsonists were hunting her, and what to do about Jaden.

* * *

The remainder of the ride passed in terse silence, and before long, we’d reached the abandoned Greenlock Towing. I had been by the facility once or twice in the past, but the warehouse and massive piles of junked cars past the fence still overwhelmed my senses for a moment. I had never actually been _in_ the impound, but it was well known that the location was truly sprawling, and I could easily understand why Masuyo had come here for cover instead of anywhere else in the area.

The businesses and houses in the area were all boarded up and in varying states of disrepair after having been condemned by the previous mayor’s staff in the name of an ill-fated city revitalization project that had promised to reinvigorate the south end with affordable housing for the dock workers and low-income families and space for new business to flourish and add new jobs to the economy. Politics hadn’t really been on my mind when the man had first ran for office, but apparently that project had been a key part of his platform. The funding to actually get the rebuilding started had ultimately fallen into a state of limbo, never quite satisfying all parties involved, and after years of promises and nothing to show for them but a now uninhabitable portion—thankfully a small one— of the city, the current mayor had won by a landslide.

Masuyo could have basically used any segment of this area as potential cover if she could gain entry, but if the Arsonists had successfully tracked her into one, then she would have easily been cornered. The jungle of rusting cars in Greenlock Towing would yield her an abundance of cover and hiding spots, which regrettably made my job of rescuing her significantly more difficult, especially if the Arsonists were a group of any significant size.

Fortunately, I had help, and I didn’t just mean Mel.

“Go ahead and come on out, Webster,” I called out in what I prayed was an approachable tone, hoping I was making the right decision. I didn’t trust the PI one iota, but even though I still didn’t understand what her power was, just about anything could help here. “I know you’re there.”

No response came for nearly half a minute. I cursed. I couldn’t afford to lose time if the PI wasn’t willing to play ball, but I decided to try one more time before I abandoned the idea. This time, I threw her a bone, hoping she’d take the bait. “We know about your power. It’s okay—we have powers too.”

Mel gasped and she snapped her head my way. She probably felt betrayed. I had kept the existence of my own power a secret in spite of my own knowledge of hers, and I had just revealed her own power to someone we both fully expected to stab us in the back. Whatever. The damned PI had literally stalked half the night across the city. Even if she wouldn’t figure out the truth tonight, she would eventually. Mel could either get over it or not. It was her problem, and I was running out of time.

“Well this is unexpected,” Jaden softly replied as she began to emerge from the sidewalk. I clicked a few times to observe the process and found it difficult to describe. She wasn’t growing from a small size, nor was she solidifying from a mist—the closest description I found apt was ‘unfolding,’ but it felt oddly constraining it to think of it that way. Maths had always been one of my stronger subjects, and geometry was no exception, since my inability to see didn’t mean I couldn’t visualize. I had started examining her midway through the process, and while her head and most of her torso were three dimensional, her hips down to her knees were flat, depthless, and bleeding into being from the ground where I presumed the rest of her lay in the first dimension. “Nobody’s ever discovered my power without me showing them. Your hearing power clued you in, I suppose?”

If I hadn’t been so anxious to get into the impound, I might have laughed. Under the circumstances I merely jabbed my pointer finger at Mel, who was busy glancing back and forth between us like she didn’t quite know who to focus on. “She’s got the sound power, actually. I heal myself. There, now that we’ve exchanged B.F.F. necklaces and secret handshakes, can we get on with rescuing my sister from the pyromaniac extremists?”

Jaden’s jacket rustled as she turned to examine Mel for a moment. Mel didn’t move or make a sound, and I realized that somewhere along the line she had turned off her headphones for the first time in my presence. I almost felt honored. Almost. “I’m not one for letting an innocent girl get burnt alive by wackos,” the PI replied at length. “But you’re asking me to put my life on the line. I’m sure you’ve realized by now I’m on a job. If I help you, then you both truthfully answer my questions when this is all said and done. Say, 2 P.M. tomorrow at the Ginza. Otherwise, I’ll stalk you until you’ll think I’m _always_ watching you. Deal?”

For the second time that day, Jaden extended her hand to me. I took it without hesitation.

“Deal,” I lied.

* * *

Mel’s powers unsurprisingly lent themselves well to a supporting role, giving the three of us an easy means to communicate and coordinate our sweep of the impound. In the end, she was the one who found them—all of them. “Hey you two, there’s a lot of distortions in the tapestry in a clearing at the southwest part of the compound. They’re more or less clumped together. There are a few people standing away from the rest, but they’re on the far side from us. So, uh, I don’t think they’re guards or anything like that? Jun, you’re closest. Head south about ten more rows then east two. Jaden, go down three more rows, then take that path straight west for awhile. I’ll guide you from there.”

“On my way,” the PI replied, all business. If Jaden questioned what the hell the ‘tapestry’ was, then she was doing an excellent job hiding it. Between this and her earlier nonchalance, I began to suspect she had more experience dealing with powered people than just us. My estimation of the possible danger she represented went up a notch and that was before accounting for the possibility of her having some of them on her side.

I had already begun dashing to follow the directions Mel had outlined, planning to slow once I got closer, when Jaden added, “Also, no more using names. No sense giving the Arsonists names on top of faces.”

“Ooh, like codenames?” Mel chirped, inappropriately excited at the notion in my opinion. “Dibs on ‘Amplitude!’”

“Darn, and here I’d wanted that?” the PI lightly joked, also sounding confused by our companion’s sudden passion. “You can just use first letter of our last names or something else that’s basic like that.”

“But that’s so boooring,” she whined—fucking _whined_! “You could be ‘Plait’ or ‘Braid’ because you’re combining with things and it fits with your hair!”

“Shut. _Up_ ,” I hissed as I reduced speed now that I’d gotten closer so my approach would go unnoticed. “This isn’t a goddamn game.”

“Look, some... people I know call me ‘Ori,’” Jaden said, and I wanted to scream in frustration at the continuation of the accursed topic. “You know, like in origami? Just... _please_ don’t call me _Plait_. I think that just took years off my life.”

“Ooh, but what are we going to call the sourpuss? Gotta be something fancy, since he’s so pretty with his hair still down! Maybe... Queen?”

I had no words. Literally none. Though I did abruptly realize that yes, my hair was indeed still down and in whatever style Junko had placed it in earlier. If I’d had a hair band, I’d have fixed that, but it didn’t matter anyway. It’s not like it would obscure my ‘vision.’

I could hear the Arsonists now, and there were a lot of them, so I banished my annoyance with Mel for the time being. What mattered right now was _Masuyo_. “‘D,’ where is the target at?” I whispered, defaulting to the naming system Jaden had suggested.

I leaned around the corner as far as I dared for the moment and clicked out my environment, carefully keeping the volume as low as I could without sacrificing my clarity. The ‘clearing’ the Arsonists were in was surrounded by a wall of cars in a sort of oblong shape that was surprisingly large 25 meters long or so. Some sort of incredibly tall structure lay in the middle, and though I couldn’t say for sure, I suspected it was a crane, which might explain the clearing. The Arsonists themselves were in a somewhat scattered formation but all within 5 or so meters of the clearing’s center, except for three people who were positioned against the other wall. There were a _lot_ of people here—way more than I’d anticipated.

“I can’t really tell who’s who, since I’ve never met your sister, Queen,” Mel replied. “And it’s _Amplitude_!”

Yeah, that brought the anger back with a vengeance. “I swear, when this is fucking over—”

“Both of you take a chill pill,” Jaden cut in. “What do you see, K?”

“Queen’s blind, Ori.”

“There’s a lot of people in the clearing,” I ground out through clenched teeth. “Hard to tell exactly, but maybe 10 to 15 total? Only three are separated from the rest, and they’re on the far side.” I let out another click, carefully listening to the feedback. “I’m way too far away to get a clear read or really hear them properly. She might not even be here for all I know.”

A dull thwack came through the link like something had just hit one of the others. “I’m an idiot. Here I am looking at their patterns and not bloody listening to them.”

I was seriously beginning to weigh the pros and cons of murdering Mel once Masuyo was safe.

The whooshing sound of displaced fire followed by a familiar voice screaming cut through my murderous ruminations. _The three against the wall_ , I realized as I dashed into the clearing, all thoughts of stealth banished by the possibility of my little sister—my only family—being burned alive. “Leave her the fuck alone!”

A clamor of confusion swept over the assembled Arsonists as I crossed the distance at a sprint. The crackling of flames didn’t die away, but Masuyo’s cry of, “Jun-nii!” didn’t sound pained, so I counted my blessings. “Run away!”

The rest of her words fell on deaf ears as two things happened. First, now that I was much closer, my clicks revealed Masuyo was one of the three figures by the wall of cars, and she was on the ground and against the wall. Second, and much more importantly...

“Oh god, her pattern is naked,” Mel said in shock.

A scream of rage resounded in the area, and it took a moment for me to realize it had come from _me_. I was nearly upon the three of them when the flames I’d been hearing, which were apparently between Masuyo and the two Arsonists, dissolved into nothingness. The figure closest to Masuyo burst into flame the second after, and the fire surrounding him shot towards me as an effigy quick enough that I couldn’t fully dodge in time. I threw myself to the left as best as I could, but the effigy washed over most of my legs. My skin practically melted away, and I couldn’t contain the scream of pain that escaped me. I rolled with the momentum, and the excruciating pain somehow managed to ratchet up as my burnt flesh scraped over the paved ground.

“Fear not, lost one,” the first figure cried out, his voice throaty and reminding me of Nathan of all people, “for our Lord’s holy fire shall deliver you to your salvation!”

I heard the flames behind me begin rushing towards me again, so in a burst of adrenaline and improvisation, I forced my horribly damaged legs to carry me towards the second figure with the hope they wouldn’t be apparently fireproof like the first guy. A sharp whistle filled the air as the figure swung something with some minor bulk to it at me, but it was clear they had no skill, since I effortlessly ducked the weapon and swung around them to their other side in one smooth motion. The figure tried to expand the swing into a 360 degree sweep and gave a startled, feminine cry as she nearly lost her balance. Taking advantage of her inexperience, I delivered a right front kick with my now good as new, albeit now exposed by burnt away clothing, leg. The blow landed, and she was flung back into the still rapidly approaching fire.

Thinking I had taken down the woman, I started to sidestep then approach the man who apparently had flame powers only to freeze in shock when the effigy arrested its momentum over the now recovering woman, who began to _laugh_. “No servant of the Lord, our God, can be burned by holy fire,” she smugly declared, both her voice and posture indicating she felt no pain as the effigy crackled away into nothingness around her and she braced what seemed to be a warhammer against her shoulder. “It is the sign we are the chosen!”

“Jun-nii, just run!” Masuyo screamed. “I’ll be fine!”

“Wait, her leg,” the man began say in wonder, but I was already in motion.

I had no idea what the extent of my recently discovered healing power was, and I didn’t intend to put it to the test tonight with Masuyo’s safety on the line. The other Arsonists in the middle of the clearing hadn’t moved, apparently rooted on the spot—perhaps in fear of what was evolving into a superpowered showdown. That left the pair in front of me to deal with, and the fire guy was without question the more dangerous of the pair. He burst into flame once more as he realized he was about to be attacked, and whether it was due to him being as inexperienced as his partner or due to a firm belief in the fire being a deterrent, he did not guard at all. I took full advantage of the tremendous opening and delivered a crushing uppercut to the man’s jaw. I felt something crack in one of us—perhaps both of us—from the force of the blow, and the man flew backwards out of the flames and crashed to the ground in a heap. The effigy stood there motionless like a burning after image left in the wake of the man’s abrupt change in position, and I dodged around it, crossed the small distance between myself and the fallen man, and smashed a kick into the side of his head, just as I had done to the men who had attacked Mel and me at Esscee.

The effigy lingered in the air, still unmoving, and though it distorted a portion of the area I could feel, I realized a behemoth of a man had begun to rush over from the watching Arsonists in the center of the clearing, apparently having managed to shake himself from his stupor. I had a few seconds before he would reach me, so I dashed around the effigy once more and moved to attack the weapon user. In the time I’d been focused on the now unconscious man, she had readied her warhammer once more, this time in a defensive position held across her chest. Normally my fighting style relied more on parrying an attacking opponent and following up with finishing blows, but disarming a weapon wielder focused heavily in that as well, even when they weren’t attacking. She held the warhammer with her right hand on top, and unless she was a complete idiot, that indicated it was her dominate hand, so I lashed out with a quick right jab at the fingers of her left hand. She yelped in surprise and unintentionally let go of the hammer with her damaged hand, which I took advantage of by bending my knees to put her slightly up in relation to myself, grabbing the long handle with both of my hands, and slamming it up and into her chin. She crumpled, leaving the hammer in my grasp.

The nearly 2 meters tall behemoth had finally reached me. The size difference between us was over 30 centimeters, and I knew the moment he landed a hit, healing or not, it could be over for me. I had to end this quickly and decisively, and no regular blow would be likely to do the trick. He swung at me with a devastating left hook, crying out in fury with a voice pitched higher than I had expected from someone his height, and I swung my left foot back and right along the ground, twisted myself until I was perpendicular to his momentum, and swung the bottom end of the unfortunately reverse-gripped hammer handle into the back of the man’s left knee. The blow was weak, but my positioning was true—he stumbled and fell forward onto his left knee. Before he could recover, I stepped forward and delivered a front kick to the back of his head, sending him sprawling to the ground. I reversed the warhammer and slammed the pointed reverse of its head down into the back of the man’s right knee. A scream of pain and a spurt of blood escaped him in synchrony. Uncaring and unyielding, I tossed the warhammer aside, fell to a knee to throw my arms around his neck, and pulled him up into the best blood choke I could muster with the difference in our sizes.

He resisted, his neck and head squirming in my grasp, but he wasn’t the main problem. The best-laid plans often go awry, and that axiom is especially true in a fight. I was so focused on adjusting my grip on the behemoth that I didn’t realize until the warhammer buried itself in my right shoulder that the woman had not fallen unconscious from the chin strike earlier. I screamed in pain and my right arm shuddered violently and fell limp. I fumbled with my left arm to try and switch the hold to it, but between the blinding pain and my left being my non-dominant arm, he almost managed to get free of my grasp. She yanked the hammer back out, and I choked out another cry in distress. I heard Masuyo clamoring to her feet nearby, but the woman had already shifted positions and begun to tear into my back with blow after agonizing blow.

After minutes—seconds?—of torture, I distantly realized the woman was no longer assaulting my back. My right arm and even my back had begun to heal, but it was too slow now, eons longer than my recovery from the burns, and despite the oxygen deprivation, the behemoth had nearly escaped my grasp again. I reached down into myself for strength, searching for some lingering reservoir of power, and I _pulled_ him up and into the hold as best as I could.

The man in my arms disintegrated into dust. I sucked in a shocked breath, and the dust—all that remained of him—flowed into my mouth, into _me_. A felt a surge of strength flood me, and all my still shredded flesh on my back rapidly knit itself together.

A silence like death descended upon the clearing, the graveyard of cars around us echoing with the last seconds of struggle before they too ended. The same daze that had infected the crowd of onlookers earlier overcame us all in a moment of collective horror, and we remained frozen.

The silence dragged on, and I almost thought we might all be stuck there, suspended in eternity to forever contemplate the fact I had just turned a man to dust and _eaten him_. But eventually a wail of terror escaped from someone in the watching crowd of Arsonists, and the moment was broken. A hasty shuffle, a cocked hammer, an explosive bang, and _pain_ unlike any I’d ever experienced followed, sending me crashing face first into the ground. My nose should have been broken on the pavement, but I realized I no longer had it. Without needing to touch the damage itself, I could somehow feel the hole in the back of my head and that nearly half of my face was missing.

I realized this and also that I still _could_ realize it.

_“...Whether you deem this a ‘cost’ is a matter of perception. Now: Do you accept your place as The Devil?”_

_‘Power over my own death...’ Fine. I’ll... I’ll take it._

_“Then it’s a deal!” the voice crowed with perverse delight. “And so the flesh dies that the essence might live! I do hope you’ll prove entertaining, my dear girl.”_

More of that dream—but no, no it was real, wasn’t it? Fuck... This shouldn’t be possible. And yet... Didn’t I know a girl who bent sound to her whim? Didn’t I punch into unconsciousness a man who can create fire?

My power wasn’t healing my body... It was repairing my corpse. ‘Power over my own death’ at the cost of _actually being dead_.


	6. Dealt In, 01.b—Masuyo

“I’m never going to flip anyone off again,” Masuyo said to herself as she rounded a corner and continued sprinting through the piles of cars, the last torched remnants of her clothes falling off as she did so.

The chain of events had started off innocently enough, when she flipped off her track coach. It had all been so stupid! She had more or less gotten the hang of stopping herself from causing  _ not so normal  _ things to happen and, quite frankly, felt entitled to forgiveness for a minor slip-up. It had hardly been her fault she’d botched a hurdle jump and kicked straight through the metal hurdle. It had also not been her fault Jun used to attend St. Alice’s too and had been ‘noticeable’ enough that some of the juniors and seniors knew about him and his proclivity for martial arts. It had very much so not been her fault that bitch Veronica had suggested Jun had taught Masuyo how to ‘karate chop’ through things —nevermind the fact a ‘chop’ is done with one’s hands and not with  _ metal _ , at least that Masuyo was aware of—and she had broken it on purpose. And considering none of those things had been Masuyo’s fault, she had felt quite vindicated when she told Veronica exactly what she thought of her idiotic suggestion and when she flipped off the coach for berating her about the whole matter. She had just been caught up in the heat of the moment, you know?

When she was sent home from practice early, she thought it had all worked out because she ran into her friend Jael at the coffee shop near the school and was invited to some church thing nearby that Jael swore was going to be amazing . It had seemed a little odd a church event to be happening on a Thursday,  but she’d had nothing else to do, so she hadn’t paid it much mind — She was going to get some unexpected time with a friend, even if the event ended up being cheesy, and her family wouldn’t suspect something was wrong if she showed up at home early to watch anime, so win-win.

She had expected some youth group game night, Christian rock band performance, or something else that was decidedly normal. When she was lead to the warehouse at Greenlock, she had revised her guess to ‘secret drug party not to be discussed openly on school grounds,’ which was still at least quasi-normal in her opinion. The ARR gathering she had found inside where people were being set on fire to ‘cleanse them of their sins’ and the survivors were being conscripted was decidedly  _ not normal _ and, regrettably, also the sort of shindig you were not allowed to leave. 

But that hadn’t been crazy enough by itself, oh no—there had been fucking superpowers involved because she was apparently not the only one to discover that particular urban myth was real after all. The creep named ‘Brother Joash’ had been in charge of burning people alive with the fire he was conjuring out of himself, and ‘Sister’ Jael, who Masuyo had realized she clearly did not know nearly as well as she’d thought, had been in charge of the Arsonists keeping people in. Considering she was Masuyo’s age and rail thin, she normally wouldn’t have been considered intimidating by anyone older than 12 and thus not suited to being the head guard, but the panicked crowd had nevertheless given her a very wide berth when she started turning a small stack of rusty metal bars into a gleaming steel weapons and handing them out to her fellow Arsonists.

Masuyo had always tried to be as independent as a fifteen-year-old could be, but she had not been ashamed in the slightest when she hid herself between some of the other, taller victims and started calling Jun the second she thought no one was looking. She’d barely managed to tell him where she was before being noticed and dragged up to the front kicking and screaming by two burly guys. She’d tried valiantly to  _ touch _ one of them and make a  _ not so normal  _ thing happen, but they’d been gripping holding her by her thoroughly hoodie covered sleeves, and before she knew it, Brother Joash had been standing above her and drowning her in his flames.

Fortunately for Masuyo, her power’s proclivity for happening with or without her actively intending to use it had saved her. The instant the fire had touched her skin, she stole its heat. The resultant shock—okay, and likely also her nakedness, if she was being honest—had given her the chance to flee and punch through the wall by stealing its hardness. Unfortunately for her, she’d punched her way  _ into _ the compound, not out of it, and the Arsonists had quickly recovered and started to give chase.

“She’s this way!” she heard a high-voiced man call out from not too far away, dragging her out of her reverie.

“What the hell?” the still running Masuyo panted out in surprise as she took another turn while pushing her burning leg muscles. She was on the track team, but her specialties were the 100m hurdles and the pole vault, not the long distance and she had been running from there for a  _ long _ time. They were going to give out soon enough. “Am I leaving a trail or something?”

She rounded another corner and skidded to a halt when she realized she had run straight into a large clearing—or rather she tried to but fell to the ground with a yelp when her legs failed. With a panicked glance around, she struggled to her feet and threw herself into the closest car that had a door with a missing window and ducked down out of sight. The hunting party arrived quickly after and for an instant, Masuyo thought she was safe.

The car door in front of her melted and reformed into a hammer with a spike on the back of its head, and she found herself face to face with Jael, Joash, and a behemoth of a man she had seen standing to the side of the gathering earlier.

“Brother Anthony can find you wherever you run, my dear,” Joash said with a smile, gesturing at the man to his left. “There’s no point in continuing this fruitless chase, so won’t you come out and speak with us?”

“That’s cheating,” Masuyo couldn’t help but mutter as she slowly crawled out of the car as best as she could with her legs still protesting and her arms occupied with covering herself up as best as possible. She apparently wasn’t protecting her modesty as well as she would have liked, as Anthony blushed, turned, and stalked away towards the rest of the Arsonists. At least  _ one _ of the religious nutters wasn’t a lech. She tried to stand, but her legs abjectly refused to listen, causing her to fall to her knees before them.

“An understandable thought,” Joash remarked with a chuckle. “But it can hardly be considered ‘cheating’ when it is divine will. Our Lord’s fire engulfed you this eve, and though I thought you a lost one, you passed through the ordeal unmarked! You have been tempered for a purpose, my dear. Truly it is providence that you should be here among us this day.”

“‘Providence.’ Not sure I’d call it that,” she replied, giving Jael a betrayed look. 

Her ‘friend’ Jael refused to meet her gaze but softly remarked, “I knew she wasn’t lost.”

“A true servant of God can admit when he is wrong,” Joash responded with humility, turning and sketching a bow to her, “and you were most assuredly right in this regard, Sister Jael.” He turned his gaze back to me and asked, “You do understand that we mean you no harm? We wish only to save the lost by cleansing them of sin and bring into the fold all those chosen by God. Will you not take your place at our side?”

There in that moment with her dignity in shambles, with her legs still painfully burning from running, and with her safety on the line, Masuyo gave in.

“I—y-yes,” she whispered and bowed her head to hide her tears.

“Then bathe once more in the fire of our Lord and emerge to your true purpose, Sister!”

She heard the rush of fire, and she instinctively clenched her eyes shut despite knowing she would just steal its heat once more.

“Leave her the fuck alone!”

Masuyo’s head shot up, her tear-filled eyes wide with horror. “No,” she whispered in pure horror, having completely forgotten she’d panicked and called him earlier. Her mind helpfully reminded her of the burnt corpses she had seen all evening, and guilt began to claw at her insides—she’d signed his death warrant. “Jun-nii! Run away!” she screamed, hoping to ward him away before he got too close to flee.

Her hopes were dashed when he let out a primal roar and charged towards where she was kneeling. Her brother, who worked hard to keep enough money flowing into the house so she could keep attending St. Alice’s, who had so admirably dealt with being blind all his life, who had once been full of cheer and smiles, who had  _ come here to save her _ —her beloved brother was going to be  _ burnt alive _ .

As Jun’s leg got burnt, Masuyo tried once again to pull herself to her feet, abandoning her feeble attempts to preserve her modesty in order to better support herself with her arms.

“Fear not, lost one, for our Lord’s holy fire shall deliver you to your salvation!”

She slipped on the loose dirt and her body gave out once more, her limbs beginning to tremble with dread.

Her traitorous friend tried to slam Jun’s head with a hammer, but he thankfully dodged and kicked her into the oncoming flame that she instinctively knew wouldn’t burn the girl.

The fire might as well have not been there for all it bothered Jael. “No servant of the Lord, our God, can be burned by holy fire,” she declared in a superior tone Masuyo had never heard from her before. “It is the sign we are chosen!”

If her body would not work, then she would have to try with her voice again. “Jun-nii, just run! I’ll be fine!”

Jun didn’t back down, rushing forward at Joash and delivering a devastating punch to the man’s jaw that sent him crashing to the ground, and before the Arsonist could recover, Jun followed up by smashing his foot into the side of the fallen man’s head. Anthony began to rush forward from the watching crowd, but before he could get close enough to do anything, Jun had stolen Jael’s hammer and she had collapsed to the ground. In a flash, Jun twisted around Anthony, knocked him down, and brought the hammer’s point down into the man’s knee. Masuyo was so caught up in the sight of her tiny brother trying to choke the easily 6’6” tall man that she didn’t notice Jael had managed to get back up until it was too late.

She sobbed when the blow landed in Jun’s back, and with a renewed surge of adrenaline, Masuyo forced her legs to comply. She staggered forward, willing her body to stay upright as Jael continued to slam the hammer’s point into Jun, and once she’d finally gotten close enough, she swung wildly at the weapon as it came down for another blow. Her hand cleaved straight through the metal as she stole its hardness, sending the point whistling through the air and crashing to the ground nearby.

“Leave my brother  alone!” Masuyo choked out, shoving Jael back. 

The other girl opened her mouth to respond, but then her dark eyes shot wide and stared at something behind Masuyo, her mouth agape. As she turned to look, Masuyo belatedly realized Jael could have been playing her for a fool, but then she saw Jun kneeling on the ground, the half obliterated back of his shirt revealing only smooth, undamaged skin. Anthony was nowhere to be found. She barely had time to question where the man could have gone when she heard someone in the crowd cry out in terror, cock a gun, and fire. 

With her own two eyes Masuyo watched the bullet punch a hole through Jun’s head, blood and chunks of flesh erupting from his face and coating the ground in a dark, viscous red. He crashed into the puddle of his innards and went still.

She screamed in dismay and collapsed again, her second wind vanishing as quickly as it’d come. “Please, no,” she desperately began to pray, not even sure who or what she was praying to. “Get up, Jun-nii. You have to get up. You’re not dead. You’re  _ not _ .” 

Somewhere in the crowd behind her, she heard a struggle and an unfamiliar woman’s voice shouting, but her eyes couldn’t move from her brother’s corpse, her lips mouthing a silent plea for a miracle she deep down knew wouldn’t come.

And yet, the impossible happened right before her eyes. She watched in disbelief as Jun’s arms rose and pushed him up and onto his knees. Then with the ease of someone who had merely tripped and scuffed their knee, he stood upright and turned to face her. What remained of his jaw mouthed at her for a moment with blood frothing behind it, then all the damage washed away in a cloud of dust like it’d never happened, leaving only Jun’s prosthetic eyes missing. It was simultaneously the most gruesome and beautiful sight she’d ever seen.

“You can’t kill The Devil.”

“Holy shit,” Masuyo whispered to herself in disbelief. “Who exactly answered my prayer?”

* * *

“Sure thing, I can be ‘sick’ and miss school,” Masuyo replied with as much fake cheer as she could before Jun could say anything to the contrary. Her brother grumbled at that and said nothing. The rest of the car fell into silence again, and had this been any other night, she would have tried to fill the void and tried  to draw Jun out of his shell. Tonight,  Masuyo was okay with the quiet, since she was still extremely uncomfortable with everything that had happened and was doing her best to hide it from Jun. The task was much more difficult than she felt it had any right to be because of her persistent, niggling fear the jacket she was wearing would accidentally open. With the way this day had gone, they’d be next to a police car, and she’d get arrested for being some kind of flasher.

The rest of the ride passed by uneventfully, and though her fear of being arrested for public nudity never came to pass, her bad luck put her in a different but no less worse situation instead —the  light was on in the living room. “Oh god, Dad’s still up. I am so dead,” she declared.

“No, I am,” Jun muttered, sounding almost self mocking, as he slipped out of the car. 

She gave him an odd look but followed quietly, unsure what to say. She turned and sketched a quick bow to the person who’d lent Masuyo her jacket and who she’d still yet to get the name of, and muttered a quick, “See you tomorrow,” before softly but firmly shutting the car door.

They slowly approached the door as Jun reached straight into his pockets, grabbed his key ring, and isolated the correct key with its raised ‘H’ key cover straight away. Lucky —it normally took him longer than that to pick it out from the jumble of keys he had from Ginza and the storage locker. “Living room, right?”

“Yeah, that’s right.”

“How far down does that jacket go on your thighs?”

“Uh, it’s actually a trenchcoat, and that lady was a good bit taller than me, so it goes all the way down to my ankles.”

“Good. Keep that jacket tight around you, but don’t make it look unnatural. If you’re asked tomorrow, then you lost your jacket earlier tonight while we met up with some of my friends, and one of them lent you their jacket. If you get upstairs quick enough, he won’t even notice you’re barefoot, so  _ do not stop _ .  I’ll fend him off and explain you were dead tired and had started to feel sick. That will mix with your excuse for tomorrow.” 

He unlocked the door, opened it, and stalked straight towards the living room, leaving Masuyo to ascend the stairs as swiftly as she felt still looked natural.

“Where on earth have you two been?!”

Masuyo winced at the worry in his tone but heeded Jun’s plan and kept on going.

“Masuyo? I’m still talking to you!” she heard Dad call out as she slipped into her room and hastily grabbed a nightshirt, some pajama bottoms, and a pair of underwear at random out of her drawers.

“She started to feel really sick a bit ago and just wants to get to bed, Nathan,” she heard Jun say as she shrugged off the trenchcoat and hastily pulled on the clothes she’d grabbed.

There was a second of hesitation before her dad finally replied, and she could easily imagine the pain in his eyes. Even though Dad wasn’t Jun’s dad by blood, Jun had called him ‘papa’ back when they were kids. A few years before Mom died, he had started to only call him ‘Nathan’ and refused to allow Dad to call him ‘Jun-chan’ anymore. Dad had never really gotten over it.

“Where are your prosthetics? And where  _ have _ you two been?” Dad said, much softer this time, as Masuyo turned off her bedroom light and climbed into bed, having left the door ajar so she could hear the rest of the conversation.

Jun completely ignored the question about his prosthetic eyes, instead replying, “She had a bad time at practice and called me after because she wanted to go out and focus on something else. I already had plans to hang out with some friends, so I invited her to tag along. None of us realized how late we’d let it get, sorry.” Masuyo hmm’d at that. She owed Jun  big—he had brought out ‘sorry’ and everything.

“Jun-chan, it’s nearly 2 in the morning.” Oh shit. 3... 2... 1...

“Do  _ not _ call me that,” Jun hissed, his voice quiet enough she had to strain to hear it yet venomous enough that  _ she _ was cringing away, and the fury wasn’t even directed at her. “You don’t get to call me that.  _ Ever _ .”

“I’m sorry,” Dad replied, obviously contrite at the slip-up. “I’m just still—”

“You’re not still anything. I told you that day you weren’t allowed to call me that anymore, but you  _ won’t fucking listen _ ! You  _ never  _ have!” Jun had progressively gotten louder and louder until he was shrilly shouting, the timbre uncannily sounding like Mom. “The only reason I’m not out of here already is because you can’t bring in enough money to support your o-only daughter by yourself, and I can’t afford enough to both fix your mistakes and live somewhere else yet!”

‘That day’? Had there been something in particular that had caused the rift between them? If so, this was the first hint of such a thing that Masuyo had ever caught wind of.

“Jun, you know I can’t— I’ve tried—” he said, starting to sound angry but unable to formulate a retort. Masuyo clutched her sheets around herself a tad more tightly. Mom’s death was not a happy topic for any of them, but Dad in particular had never fully recovered, still suffering from dysthymia and periodic bad episodes.

“Go fuck yourself, Nathan,” Jun hissed at him, deathly quiet again, his voice still high and strained. “I’m going to bed.”

“Don’t you dare talk to me like that, young man!” Dad roared at him, having reached the end of his famously short fuse and apparently deciding to abandon a reasoned response in favor of trying to exert parental authority. Masuyo realized things were going to get  _ Bad _ with a capital ‘B’ unless she stepped in, so she threw aside her sheets and sped towards the stairs.

The slap and dull thump that echoed up the stairwell told her she was too late. The stairwell light wasn’t on, but the light from the nearby living room illuminated it well enough that she could clearly see Jun standing over Dad where he laid on the floor. She gasped when she saw the angry red handprint on her Dad’s left cheek and the thin wisps of dust that briefly swirled around Jun’s trembling hand before dispersing into nothingness.

Masuyo wasn’t sure how long the three of them sat there in silence, but it was Jun who finally broke it.

“I’m going to talk a walk,” he tremulously announced, the anger from before all but vanished. He moved to the door, Dad tracking him fearfully the whole way, but paused after he’d pulled it open. “I’m... look, you shouldn’t have grabbed me, but for what’s worth... I’m sorry.” Then he left into the night.


End file.
